News about my day-to-day experiences with software development (mostly Java), database systems, good food, and the occasional personal update.

Friday, June 26, 2009

My t-shirts

Joe Nuxoll of the Java Posse recently tweeted that he was a huge Commodore 64 fan, "back in the day." Well, I happened to be wearing a C64-themed t-shirt that I made a year back, so I tweeted a picture of it and offered to send him one.

But then, to optimize shipping costs, I figured I might as well package up a set of 4 shirts of my own design and outfit the whole Posse in (hopefully) unique geeky wit, in t-shirt form. And for that matter, why not publish my work so everyone can enjoy my sense of humor (or implore me not to quit my day job).

So here's the collection so far. I have lots more ideas, but this is a catalog of shirts I've actually made and worn (in public, no less!).

This was my contribution to a larger t-shirt design at work. I think it stands on its own. The code snippets are real things we found in the code base at work. :)

Yes, I was a huge Commodore 64 fan back in the day too.

It's true!

This one that gets people commenting pretty frequently. Reactions run the gamut from "don't get it even after explanation, which is fine 'cause it's not funny once you try to explain it," through to overly deep analysis ("aren't the letters themselves just symbols that replace words?")

This one probably gets more comments than any other. I've become somewhat of an expert at explaining what rot13 is to non-geeks. I'm happy to say several people have decoded it from across the room without my help.

Plus, it's the only t-shirt design I'm aware of that comes with a secret decoder key under the front panel!

Shirts for other people

Ok, so I haven't worn all the shirts I made. Here are some I've given away as gifts:

This one was a birthday present for my friend Chris, who seizes every opportunity to remind us in no uncertain terms that he doesn't like to eat mushrooms.

This is the only one that wasn't my idea. Someone at BSDCan told me he always wanted a shirt like this, so I made it for him. What does it mean? Ask Locutus of Borg.

My sister's boyfriend Tom enjoys boasting about the time they visited some friends and their new baby was quite content to be held by him, but kept crying every time my sister took a turn. I'm not sure if this shirt was intended as a jibe or just more fuel for the fire, but he wears it proudly.

This one was for my father-in-law, Billy. Yes, he's a bit of an IKEA fan and so are we.